This month the local Rio Grande Roundtable, a group representing various water interests in the basin, decided to send five more projects to the state for funding. If the state board approves these requests during the March Colorado Water Conservation Board meeting, Valley water projects will see another approximately $2 million from statewide water funds, plus $195,000 from the basin funds…

“It’s getting more and more competitive,” Gibson said. “This basin’s been extremely fortunate in the past. We’ve got good projects that have been funded. We’ve got good projects that have been completed. We’ve got good projects that are still underway, but we need to think about reality. If you were on the CWCB board would you be willing to give two-thirds of the account remaining in the statewide account to us when we have been able to dip into that pocket the deepest?”

CWCB staffer Greg Johnson said that has not been an issue in the past, and he did not know how much that might enter into the CWCB’s discussions in the future. He said it might depend on how much competition there is for the funding.

Roundtable and CWCB member Travis Smith said the board has criteria and guidelines in place to judge all of the projects coming in from around the state, and those will be crucial in determining the best projects for funding when there is not enough money to fund them all.

“Our projects are good projects so I am anticipating we are going to have success,” he said.”[…]

Re-elected Roundtable Vice-chairman Rio de la Vista suggested the roundtable might need to prioritize its projects in the event not all of them receive funding in March. The roundtable members might need to choose which projects could be put off until the September CWCB meeting. ..

[Greg Johnson] said although the state funding has been cut significantly, “the good news is we do have a little bit more than we thought we did.”

The state account will have a balance in March of $4.5 million, rather than the $3 million that was anticipated, he said.